Mariah Carey
Member
sphinx said:the PS/N64 era was in a whole different league in regards to public enthusiasm. Just look at the hype for Ocarina of time, Final Fantasy 7, Resident Evil, Mario 64, among many others. People were absolutely mad for those games, completely crazy.
Even today, don't you dare imply ocarina of time is NOT the best game of all time, or that Final fantasy 7 isn't the best in the series or that the pinnacle of 3d platforming isn't embodied in Mario 64. That kind of craziness was never achieved last gen. well...maybe Halo with the shooter genre but that's an american thing, not global.
Even with the PS2 huge sales, the hype is lukewarm compared to that.
it all comes to personal impressions, I suppose.
It's true that the PS/N64 years had more blockbusters (last gen had GTA and Halo and... that was about it), but mostly the hype was on the *games* themselves. The craziness over the PS2 was there from day one even when it didn't have many killer apps, and it got to downright ridiculous levels.
Actually, I'd submit that it's partly because of the N64 that some of the PS1 hype, at least from what I remember in NA, wasn't as big as PS2. Nintendo was still dropping first-party smashes (in fact, correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't Mario 64, Zelda, GoldenEye, and Mario Kart outsell anything on the PS?), and although PlayStation was still winning decisively, to most of the public the videogame market was "Sony and Nintendo" in much the way the generation preceding it was "Nintendo and Sega."
XBox and GameCube (even combined) really couldn't do the same with the PS2. Last gen was completely PlayStation dominated, with the odd Halo or Smash Bros party. Of course, I wasn't so big on gaming in those years so my perspective is probably a little different than many others here, but that's how I remember it.
By the way, don't the XBox and GameCube seem like the split personalities of the Nintendo 64? (I realize I'm getting really off topic...)